Ad Matters 14.06.24

It’s starting to feel like all roads lead to Cannes. Or in our case, all train tracks. The AA team and our Ad Net Zero colleagues are hard at work putting all the finishing touches to a huge raft of activities, events and announcements for next week’s Festival of Creativity.

For those of you who might not know, we, the AA, are the U.K. reps for Lions. This means we are responsible for our Young Lions, our jurors and our award winners, even to the point of collecting awards on their behalf if they are not there.

We are also there in support of our members, many of whom have event programmes which we are supporting with content and speakers.

Then our exports workstream team is running another of their amazing programme of events, 30 at the last count, to help more than 40 UK companies sell their services to international prospects.

And our Ad Net Zero colleagues in the U.K., US, Europe and further afield are all working on progress updates linked to the 5-point action plan to share the latest with people from around the world.

I will try and find some time too to chat with people about our book, Sustainable Advertising and to review the winning work to see what we can learn from the best creative work of the past 12 months, all to bring back insights to share with U.K. colleagues.

In short, it’s a monster four days and nights of insights, inspiration, and networking and I’m excited to be part of the team that is helping make it all happen. There’s nothing quite like it in advertising’s annual calendar.

If you want to follow what we’re up to, check out UK Advertising on LinkedIn and subscribe to its daily LinkedIn newsletter.

Our must reads:

• Do you have questions about election advertising? Check out how four different media owners delivered our new political advertising campaign with Media Smart in just eight days! (The Media Leader)
• Global ad spend predicted to hit the trillion mark in 2025, while UK ad revenue is predicted to increase by 4.9%, according to GroupM. (Marketing Week)
• Newsflash: Journalism matters to young audiences. Newsworks shows that news content readership is rising, particularly for people in their late teens and twenties. (Campaign)
• This week’s Media Leader podcast features IAB’s Engage 2024 event, hosted by James Chandler and with a talk on the ‘Joy of Trust’ by our very own CEO, Stephen Woodford. (The Media Leader)

Our pick of recent ads:

• Spotify is asking Gen Z to make their voice heard by voting in the General Election.
• British Heart Foundation’s new campaign, by Saatchi & Saatchi, is a tribute to football fans who died early from heart disease.
• Sainsbury’s has rolled out the latest iteration of its ‘Hey Sainsbury’s’ campaign, created by New Commercial Arts.
• To support skin cancer charity the Melanoma Fund, Neverland is helping Kopparberg with their UV-blocking football shirts for Euro 2024 watchers.

Events:

• Just a few more days until we’re off to Cannes! We’re proud to be the UK representative for the world’s biggest festival of creativity, taking place from June 17. Find out more here.
• The Media Business Course is 60 years old! This year, MBC will be taking place in Eastbourne from 9-12 July. You can register here.

Interested in learning more about Trust, hybrid working in the ad industry and political advertising? The new Credos Quarterly provides insights on all these topics and more! If you’d like to subscribe to our thinktank’s newsletter, click the link here.

And finally, congratulations to all the winners of the AOP’s Digital Publishing Awards on Wednesday night, including Campaign/Haymarket, Immediate Media, News UK and Sky Media!